of the repulse of 300 United States troops in three attempts to cross
the Canard River bridge for an attack on Amherstburg, and of their being
driven into the open plains, with loss, by Procter's men.

It was in one of these attacks that the first scalp in the war of 1812
was taken--not by one of Brock's terrible Indians, whose expected
excesses had been referred to by Hull, but by a captain of Hull's spies.
This officer--one hates to describe him as a white man--wrote his wife,
he "had the pleasure of tearing a scalp from the head of a British
redskin," and related at length the brutal details of his methods. They
were those of a wild beast. "The first stroke of the tomahawk," Hull had
stated in his proclamation, "the first attempt with the scalping-knife,
will be the signal of a scene of desolation." Yet the first scalp taken
in the Detroit campaign was by one of his own officers!

Brock knew that the valorous Hull, dismayed at the advance of the
British, had recrossed the river with all but 250 of his men and was
hard at work on the defences of Fort Shelby, behind which he had
retired. Brock also knew of the affair at Brownstown, where the Indian
chief Tecumseh, with twenty-five warriors, had separated himself from
Major Muir's detachment, sent to intercept a transport on its way from
Ohio to Detroit with supplies for Hull. He had been told of the
stratagem by which the great Shawanese warrior had ambushed the 200
American soldiers, near the Raisin River, who had marched from Detroit
to escort this convoy and the mails. Seven American officers were killed
at the Raisin, twelve of all ranks wounded, and seventy reported missing
after the fight. In addition to the provision train, Tecumseh captured
what was of much greater importance, another batch of Hull's despondent
despatches. It was here that swift justice overtook the scalping Captain
McCullough, of Hull's spies, who himself met with the fate of his former